SGA: "Volcano" (PG-13, John/Rodney)
I wrote this months ago and never got around to posting it here, what with me getting laid off the day after I mailed it to its recipient. But now that I have a great new job, I finally found time to clean it up a little!
Volcano
Stargate: Atlantis. PG-13, John/Rodney. ~8,800 words.
An SGA AU based upon the movie Volcano, in which John is into disaster management and Rodney is into geophysics: "Oh, my God," Rodney said. "*Volcano*. Why does nobody seem to grasp the gravity of the situation?"
Beta by nestra, although any remaining errors are my fault. Written by request for Sweet Charity.
The Office of Emergency Management (O.E.M.) is a permanent division of the City of Los Angeles.
In the event of an emergency or natural disaster, its director has the power to control and command all the resources of the city.
***
John turned over in bed and stared at his alarm clock. 5:58am and the alarm wasn't even set. He didn't need to get out of bed. In fact, John didn't have to do anything for the next two weeks. Some of his buddies from Colorado Springs were supposed to fly down and visit him during his vacation, but their plans had fallen through last week and John didn't know how he was going to fill the time without some kind of natural or man-made disaster to fix.
Maybe he'd take up surfing. Or speed chess. Video golf.
John turned over again and pulled a pillow over his head to block out the light, but Max whined and licked John's elbow, so John got out of bed and took his dog for a run. The city felt less crowded at 6am. John liked that. People kind of made him claustrophobic sometimes.
When the earthquake hit, John was sitting on his couch with his hand in a Captain Crunch box and watching the Today show. He dropped the cereal box and lurched for the doorway of the living room. Max cowered by the couch and howled.
"I hear you, buddy," John said.
The quake was short and didn't do much to John's apartment except spill the stack of Sudoku books on his coffee table. He didn't have much to knock over, just a guitar propped in the corner and a Johnny Cash poster above the couch. John didn't really go in for knick-knacks.
John rescued the box of Captain Crunch from his dog and went to change out of his sweats. An earthquake meant there'd be work to do, and John was already bored out of his mind.
***
"9:14?" Radek asked, uncapping a pen to mark the time of the earthquake on the seismograph.
Grodin checked his cell phone display and agreed, "9:14."
As Radek wrote, he said, "We need to prepare a press conference."
"We can set up in the gymnasium," Grodin said. "Plenty of room in there."
"Shall we call Rodney?" Radek asked.
Grodin pulled a face. "Must we?"
Radek considered for a moment, pushing up his glasses with his index finger. "It is unnecessary. He will have felt the earthquake, and he cannot resist the camera."
"Ham," Grodin muttered.
"Press conference," Radek said, gently nudging Grodin toward the door. "Podium. Maps."
"I know how to do my job, Dr. Zelenka," Grodin said, glaring down his nose at Radek.
"Yes," Radek said agreeably. Grodin left. Radek continued observing the seismograph for twenty or thirty minutes until Grodin came back.
"He's not here!" Grodin hissed.
"What?" Radek asked.
"Dr. McKay hasn't arrived yet," Grodin said. "You'll have to do the press conference."
Radek stared at him in dismay as Grodin pulled him out of the lab and down the hallway toward the gymnasium. He dug in his heels when he saw the crowd of journalists and cameramen surrounding the podium.
"I can't," Radek insisted.
"You can."
"I can't."
Grodin put his hands on his hips. "It's easy. You only have to say a few sentences. You have all the data right here."
"Then you do it," Radek said, and attempted to flee.
Grodin grabbed him. "You're the senior seismologist."
"You don't understand," Radek said. He wiped at his forehead and his palm came away damp with sweat. "I have a phobia of speaking in public. I go out there, I freeze up. Cannot talk. I look like I belong in an exhibit at Madame Tussauds."
Grodin rolled his eyes. "Please, you can't honestly tell me --"
Just then, Rodney sailed into the room. He snapped his fingers and held out his hand, and Radek automatically handed over his clipboard. Rodney's eyes darted back and forth as he processed the information on the page.
Absently, Rodney waved at the blue button-down shirt he was wearing under a hideous tweed jacket. "Does this color make my eyes pop? Simpson said it would make my eyes pop."
"Why are you taking fashion advice from Simpson?" Radek asked.
Rodney huffed. "Well, I'm certainly not asking you."
Radek had to shrug in agreement. He honestly didn't remember getting dressed this morning, although he was certain Elizabeth would have stopped him from leaving the house without his trousers.
Rodney handed back the clipboard and took out a pair of glasses from his breast pocket, slipping them on. They were made of plain glass; Rodney's vision was fine. Radek thought the affectation was ridiculous and had given Rodney a pocket protector for Christmas last year. Rodney had regifted it to Miko for the office Secret Santa.
"Yes, well," Rodney said finally, squaring his shoulders. "Onward."
Rodney walked into the gymnasium and stood behind the podium, immediately launching into a speech as the news crews scrambled into action. "Good morning, everyone. I hope you've all had your coffee and that your cameraman isn't in the toilet. Right. This was a small to moderate earthquake. The epicenter was in Palmdale, about 30 miles north of the city's center..."
***
John didn't actually intend to sneak into his office, but his people were distracted by the earthquake and it just sort of happened. He could monitor everything from here, and this way, Esperanza in HR wouldn't give him the stink eye for failing to take some of his stockpiled vacation time. He had one eye on his laptop screen as he opened and closed his desk drawers, searching for a Clif Bar or a box of microwave popcorn, when Lorne opened the door and walked halfway across John's office before he realized John was in it.
"Excuse me, sir," Lorne said and stood at attention, his eyebrows furrowed.
"At ease, Lorne," John joked. "I keep telling you; we're all civilians now."
Lorne grimaced. "Sorry, sir. Once a commanding officer, always a commanding officer."
"Yeah," John said. The silence was awkward, like when you realized that you had picked a steak house to meet your vegan blind date. Lorne was only six months out of the Marines, and some habits were hard to break.
"You didn't have to come in, you know," Lorne said finally. He jerked his thumb at the bullpen behind him. "Aside from one water main in Cahuenga, we've got gas, power, phone lines, everything."
"Yeah, well," John said. His phone rang. John picked up the receiver and said, "Sheppard."
"I am not surprised to find you at work," Teyla said.
"Mayor," John said. Lorne made a tactful exit. "I thought you were on vacation."
"Likewise," Teyla said. She sounded as calm as ever, but the fact that she was calling at all meant that she was worried. "Should I be canceling my plans, John?"
"Little quake, nothing to worry about. You should enjoy your time off, Teyla," John said. Just then, Lorne poked his head inside John's office door and signaled him urgently. "Look, I gotta take care of something. I'll check in with you later."
"I will keep my schedule open," Teyla said.
John hung up the phone. "Where's the fire?"
"Funny you should say that," Lorne said. "Code 6 at MacArthur Park. They're reporting casualties."
"Crap," John said.
***
John ducked under the caution tape, and five seconds later the department head of Water and Power was up his ass.
"What are you doing here?" Woolsey demanded. His tie was slightly askew and he looked grim.
"Sightseeing," John said. He shifted the maps he was carrying and pushed up his sunglasses for a moment. "Heard you lost some guys."
Woolsey huffed and straightened his posture. It didn't add much height. "It was a freak accident in a storm drain. A burst steam pipe. No fire, no explosions. No continuing threat. Your presence here is unnecessary, Sheppard."
John nodded at the blackened leg poking out of a body bag as the coroner zipped it shut. "Steam did that?"
Woolsey stepped in front of John and tried to block his view. "Yes. We'll copy you on the report. Now, if you don't mind --"
John dodged him and approached the storm drain. He peered over the edge. "Mind if I have a look for myself?"
Woolsey twitched, but then someone shouted John's name.
"Sheppard!" Caldwell shouted again, and ducked under the caution tape.
John waved him over and spread out the maps on the hood of a squad car. "Caldwell. I want to show you something."
Woolsey smiled humorlessly at Caldwell and asked, "How are your little trains doing?"
Caldwell stared until Woolsey started twitching again. "Sheppard. What do you have for me?"
John drew his finger along the sewer and storm drain on the map of MacArthur Park. "This is where your problem is," John said to Woolsey.
"Was," Woolsey interjected. "I assure you that it's no longer an issue."
John ignored him and placed a transparency of the subway system over the map, which ran alongside the storm drain death trap of doom. "This is your red line tunnel," John said to Caldwell. "I want to shut it down."
"Do you really think this is necessary?" Caldwell asked. He crossed his arms. "A little steam won't penetrate five feet of concrete."
Somebody's beeper went off, and they all automatically checked their belts.
"It's me," Woolsey said. "Are we done here?"
"Look, maybe the earthquake screwed something up down there, I don't know. But we should shut things down until we --"
"You just aren't happy unless you're declaring an emergency, are you?" Woolsey sniped as he walked away.
John rolled his eyes behind his sunglasses. "Actually, I enjoy Ferris wheels, Big Ten football games, and anything that goes more than two hundred miles per hour. Sir."
Caldwell watched Woolsey check his receding hairline in the side-view mirror of a DWP van. "30,000 people think they're taking the red line home tonight, Sheppard. What do you expect me to do?"
John shrugged. "Put on extra buses?"
Caldwell scowled. "Fine."
Caldwell turned on his heel. John leaned against the squad car and stared at the storm drain again. He just wanted to make sure everybody made it home safe; it didn't matter how. And he'd rather put himself in danger than risk anyone else.
***
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Lorne asked as they started unloading gear from the back of the O.E.M. truck.
"I don't feel like waiting for a report to tell me what's down there," John said. "What about you, Ford?"
Ford grinned. "I'm with you, sir."
Lorne sighed. "Just checking, sir."
John and Ford suited up their protective gear and oxygen tanks and then climbed into the storm drain while Lorne stayed in the truck to monitor their progress. And to call 911 in case something bad happened. John was foolhardy sometimes, but not completely stupid.
"It's hot," John commented once they made it into the storm drain.
"Hot?" Ford said. "I'm roasting like a turkey. It's hotter down here than my apartment was that one time my college roommate tried to grow weed."
"How high was your heating bill?" Lorne asked on the radio.
"No jury would've convicted me," Ford said.
A rat ran over John's foot. His gear clanked as he jumped out of the way of two more.
"Sir, Chief Landry is on the line, and he would like to speak to you," Lorne said over the radio.
"Kinda busy right now," John said, advancing farther into the storm drain.
Lorne didn't say anything for a moment. "I'll... ask the Chief of Police if he'd like to leave a message, then."
"You do that," John said.
"What the hell does he think he's doing?" Landry's voice came over the radio. "He's stepping on Public Works' toes."
"Sheppard felt that the issue was time-sensitive, sir," Lorne said.
"Tell him he's not in Kansas anymore," Landry said dryly. "We have procedures here."
"Chief Landry would like me to tell you that you're not in Kansas anymore, sir," Lorne said.
"It was Colorado," John said.
A moment later, Lorne said over the radio, "Chief Landry still wants to know why you're in a sewer and not at your desk, sir."
Ford's equipment started beeping, and John felt free to ignore the radio for a moment. He saw a steam vent in front of them, and then the tunnel started shaking and their protective gear began to melt from the heat. The plastic tubing on their masks went all goopy, like plastic wrap in a microwave, and walking was about as fun as trying to find a seat on a moving city bus while completely blotto.
John was sweating a river down the back of his suit. He'd never been this hot, not even in Kandahar at the height of summer while watching a simoon form. John grabbed Ford's arm and they hauled ass back to the ladder.
"Are you all right, sir?" Lorne asked as John and Ford climbed out of the storm drain, their gear steaming. John ripped off his facemask.
"Get LAPD on the line. We need to evacuate the area right now," John said. "Cut off gas, power, everything. And find a geologist."
***
John was in the O.E.M. bullpen and trying to avoid one of Woolsey's lackeys when Caldwell arrived with a blue-eyed stranger who had broad shoulders. Caldwell was actually squabbling with the guy, and John rarely saw Caldwell lose his cool.
"Blast away!" the stranger was saying, gesturing wildly with his hands. "Who cares about geologic transform faults?"
"Stop insinuating that I'm not concerned about public safety," Caldwell snapped.
"Possibly I'm insinuating that because you aren't," the stranger said, then turned to John. "Are you Sheppard?"
"Yep," John said.
"Dr. Rodney McKay," McKay said, holding out his hand. John shook it. "I'm from CIGS."
"Are you my geologist?" John asked.
McKay held up a finger. "Geophysicist, actually."
"Cool," John said. "Can you tell me what's under MacArthur Park?"
McKay grimaced. "Not with any certainty."
"But you can guess," John said.
McKay lifted his chin. "Of course I can, to a reasonable degree, but --"
"We ran trains under MacArthur Park all day," Caldwell interrupted. "We didn't experience any trouble."
"Hmm," McKay said. "Your scientific analysis is unassailable. Say, didn't you collapse Hollywood Boulevard?"
Caldwell's frown was epic. "Until someone can produce any hard evidence or some demonstrable risk, the trains stay on schedule. Excuse me."
They watched Caldwell leave.
"So," John and McKay said at the same time.
"So," John said after a moment. "How do I find out what's down there?"
"I'll get my equipment and meet you there," McKay said.
"Awesome," John said.
***
Rodney found Zelenka in his lab. He grabbed Zelenka by the wrist and dragged him toward the door.
"Where are we going?" Zelenka asked.
"MacArthur Park," Rodney said.
"Hmm," Zelenka said. "Did someone leave a cake out in the rain?"
"Ha ha, very funny. You should try your hand as a stand-up comedian when I fire you for incompetence," Rodney said.
They arrived at the garage. Rodney had left a small stack of equipment next to the Humvee. Most of what they needed was already inside the vehicle.
Zelenka helped Rodney pick up one of the oxygen tanks. "You'll never fire me."
"Just because you married the director of CIGS --" Rodney began saying, then cut himself off because now was not the time for their weekly argument regarding workplace nepotism. "Whatever. Get in the car."
Rodney drove them to MacArthur Park, occasionally slapping Zelenka's hands away from the radio dial. Once Sheppard waved them through the caution tape, Rodney and Zelenka immediately began taking readings.
"Look at this," Rodney said, shoving a clipboard full of printouts into Sheppard's hands.
"Neat," Sheppard said. He glanced at the columns of numbers. "What am I looking at?"
Rodney pointed emphatically at the pond in MacArthur Park. "That lake was 62 degrees yesterday. Today it's up to 68."
Sheppard leaned against Rodney's Humvee and squinted at the lake. "Huh."
Sheppard looked ridiculously attractive while doing that, but Rodney was prepared to ignore it in the face of potential stupidity and overwhelming dimness. "Listen, Sheppard. It takes a geological event to heat a million gallons of water by six degrees in twelve hours."
"What's a geological event?" Sheppard asked.
Rodney's eyes went wide. He flapped his hands. He shot Zelenka a speaking look of horror over Sheppard's shoulder. "Are you kidding me? You have got to be kidding me. How can you be the director of the Office of Emergency Management in Los Angeles when you don't know what a geological event is? Did you seriously get your job by sleeping with Mayor Emmagen? Because I thought those rumors were ridiculous after details leaked about your exemplary military service record, but I'm prepared to reconsider unless someone tells me that you're kidding."
"He's kidding," someone called out.
"Sorry," said another member of Sheppard's team, who actually looked contrite. Blue eyes. Strong jaw. Unfortunate military haircut. "He likes to do that."
"So what are you thinking," Sheppard asked lazily. "Fissure?"
"Yes, it's possible," Rodney said, pleasantly surprised. "Magma could rise to the surface."
"Magma?" Sheppard said.
"Lava," Zelenka supplied helpfully.
"Yeah, thanks," Sheppard said, somehow without sounding like a dick. "Seriously. Lava?"
"It's very unlikely," Rodney hastened to add. "But it is a valid possibility."
"You guys have a history of that sort of thing here in L.A.?"
Zelenka pushed up his glasses. "There's no history of anything until it happens."
Sheppard looked up at the sun and grimaced. "That's really not what I wanted to hear."
"Yes, well, I'm used to people saying that when I talk," Rodney said.
"Keep me posted," Sheppard said.
"Of course, gladly," Rodney said.
"Gladly?" Zelenka said when Sheppard walked away. "Gladly?"
"Shut up?" Rodney offered, and then chased after Sheppard. "Excuse me? Where do you think you're going?"
Sheppard sighed and looked a little pissy. "I can't tell people that our demonstrable risk is lava."
"Then let me go down there," Rodney insisted. "We're not going to find anything conclusive sitting here with our thumbs up our asses."
"It's too dangerous," Sheppard said.
"Oh, please," Rodney said. "My hobby is volcanology. Do you know how high my insurance premiums are?"
"Sorry," Sheppard said. "Seven people died already. I can't risk it."
Rodney turned on his heel and marched back to his Humvee. "Hmph."
"Are you done pulling each other's pigtails?" Zelenka asked.
Rodney glared at him. "I'm doing nothing of the kind."
"Oh, please," Zelenka said. He looked at Rodney over the tops of his glasses. "What's the verdict?"
"Sheppard won't let us into the storm drain," Rodney said.
Zelenka looked around, nodding at all the police cars and Public Works vehicles. "So when are we going down there?"
"Pick me up at 4am," Rodney said. "Bring coffee."
"Of course," Zelenka said.
"A lot of coffee. One of those big boxes, like a portable tureen or something." Rodney made the shape of a barrel with his arms.
"Do I look like an idiot?" Zelenka asked, then sighed. "Don't answer that."
***
"I can't go down there," Zelenka said as Rodney and Grodin suited up. "Claustrophobia."
"First public speaking, now this? What aren't you afraid of?" Grodin demanded.
"Clowns," Rodney said. "He's a freak."
"My father was a clown," Zelenka said defensively. "He was a very lovable man."
Rodney pulled on the suit's protective helmet. "Ugh, I feel like I'm the Prince of Space in this getup."
"Godzilla vs. Megalon," Zelenka said.
"Cavedwellers," Rodney said.
"C.H.U.D.," Grodin said.
"You had to go there, didn't you?" Rodney said and started climbing down the ladder into the dark.
Zelenka pointed at the storm drain. "Get down in the hole."
"Yes, sir," Grodin said flippantly, following Rodney. When they both made it down the ladder, Rodney looked around the storm drain while Grodin pawed at the walls. "Looks like sulfur."
"Hmm," Rodney said absently, moving down the tunnel. "Can you hear me, Zelenka?"
"Loud and clear," Zelenka responded on the radio.
"Maybe traces of magnesium, nickel... what do you think?" Grodin asked.
"I think you should talk less and take more samples," Rodney said. He had pretty limited vision inside his helmet, but he was fairly certainly that Grodin rolled his eyes.
"This is interesting," Grodin said as he knelt down in the tunnel about 20 feet away. And then the tunnel started shaking.
"Grodin!" Rodney called, watching part of the tunnel collapse until Grodin was clawing at the edge. The tunnel shook and lurched under his hands and knees like a suspension bridge in high wind.
"Help!" Grodin shouted. "Oh, God, help me!"
Rodney crawled over and grabbed his arms, pulling as hard as he could. Rodney was stronger than he looked, but with the combined weight of Grodin's body and the tank strapped to Grodin's back, Rodney couldn't budge him.
"You have to dump the tank," Rodney said. "Grodin. Peter! Listen to me. You have to dump the tank. I can't pull you up!"
"I'm burning!" Grodin screamed. "I'm burning! Oh, God!"
And then there was an explosion, incredible heat, the glow up something rising from below. Rodney got knocked back by the force of it, Grodin's arms slipping out of his hands. Rodney ended up on his back, staring at the ceiling, gasping for breath. When he finally managed to get up on his elbows, Grodin was gone.
"Rodney!" Zelenka said over the radio. "Rodney, Peter -- are you all right?"
Rodney crawled over to the edge and peered into the dark. There was nothing there but the abyss and the overwhelming stench of Hephaestus' armpit.
"Holy shit," Rodney said.
***
John had gone home to feed his dog and so he was home when the big one hit not long after 5am. John woke up when his copy of War and Peace fell on his head and nearly took out his eye with the metal alumni bookmark stuck in the middle of the first chapter. When the shaking finally stopped, he spared a minute to pull on a pair of jeans over his boxers and put on some shoes, and then he was in his truck driving to work while dialing the direct line to his office.
"Operations."
"This is Sheppard."
Lorne broke in. "Sir. No report yet of damages to any of the hospitals, but 911 is offline. We have reports that the freeways are clear."
"Get the helicopters up," John said. "If we don't have enough pilots, I can take one up when I get there."
"Where are you, sir?" Lorne asked.
"Heading east on Wilshire. Coming up on the tar pits. There's low visibility. No traffic lights." John could hear Lorne typing on a keyboard. "Didn't you go home last night?"
"Got stood up by my date," Lorne said. "Figured I'd make myself useful."
"That sucks," John said, and dropped the phone when the manholes started exploding.
"Sir? Sir! What's happening?" Lorne demanded.
John hit the brakes when huge chunks of something hail-like started hitting the roof of his truck. His windshield cracked. Huge clouds of black smoke began billowing out of the tar pits with flashes of something that looked like an electrical fire. John stared numbly for a moment, and then picked up his phone from the dirty foot well of his truck.
"Um," he said.
"Sir? Thank God. What's happening?"
"Um," John repeated, flooring his truck. "Kinda. Well. A flaming rock took out a billboard across the street and started a structural fire, so I think we should probably get a crew down here on, uh, Wilshire and Stanley."
"Can you elaborate, sir? What's happening?"
"Well," John said, jerking the wheel to avoid another car. "I think the tar pits are erupting."
"What?" Lorne asked.
"Get Dr. McKay. Tell him we've got Mount Doom coming out of La Brea," John said, and hung up the phone. He needed to concentrate. He felt like he was driving in Grand Theft Auto, only with fewer hookers and drug dealers and way more mayhem.
***
Rodney climbed out of the storm drain, and the first thing he saw was Zelenka's worried face.
"Are you all right? Where's Grodin?"
Rodney yanked off his helmet and stared at Zelenka dully. "Grodin's dead."
"What?" Zelenka said. He blinked and sank to his knees. "What? No. He can't be."
Rodney jerked at the buckle holding the tank to his back, swearing as it refused to come free. The oxygen tank finally dropped to the ground with a resonant thunk. Rodney sat down abruptly. "He's dead. I don't know what happened."
"Oh, God," Zelenka said. "This is my fault. He wouldn't have been down there if it weren't for me."
"Don't be ridiculous," Rodney said, but his heart wasn't in it.
"What are we going to tell his family?"
Rodney's heart was racing, and he couldn't breathe. "They'll have to have him declared dead. There's no body. I don't know how you do that in this country. These people don't have coroner's inquests. I mean, assuming they believe me when I tell them that Grodin was consumed by magma while in a storm drain. Who in their right mind would believe -- ow!"
Rodney's cheek stung. Zelenka had slapped him.
"Rodney," Zelenka said. "Look at the lake."
Rodney turned his head. The lake was bubbling, and the air was even steamier outside of his suit.
"You could hard boil eggs in there," Rodney said.
"Not good," Zelenka said.
"So not good," Rodney said. His pulse fluttered in his throat. "Terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad."
Zelenka turned away from the lake and looked toward their Humvee. "Rodney? Is that your phone ringing?"
"Screw the phone," Rodney said, feeling something brush his face. He raised his hand as if to catch a snowflake. "Is that ash?"
***
John stood next to the open gate of his truck with his first aid kit open and the contents strewn over the truck bed. He had one hand on his cell phone and was using the other to press a gauze bandage to a burn on a lady's neck. Her apartment building was engulfed in flames, and she was weeping openly. John tried to wipe his sweaty forehead on his sleeve.
"Everybody calm down. Fire department's on its way," John yelled, and then said over the phone, "Lorne, where the hell are my emergency services?"
"I'm on it, sir," Lorne said. "Shit. Engine 17 is down at Wilshire and Curson."
"That's a block from me," John said. He slammed up the gate and shouted, "Fire department's on its way. Everything will be okay."
Then John got in his truck again and floored it. Ash was coming down thickly now, like sticky fog. The downed fire engine was close. John could have hoofed it, but he didn't really relish the idea of getting beaned by a chunk of flaming rock. There was a young woman with her hair in a ponytail and she was kneeling over a firefighter on the ground. He got out of his truck and ran over to her.
"Ma'am, the ambulances are on the way, so if you could --"
She gave him an exasperated look. "I'm a doctor. This man has a skull fracture." She pointed back toward the fire engine. "That other man has a compound fracture in his left leg. Can you get him off the street?"
"Yes, ma'am," John said. "Doctor. Sir."
She rolled her eyes. She was pretty and so young that she made John feel ancient. "Dr. Jennifer Keller."
"Pleased to meet you," John said, and dragged the firefighter off the street. He could see another firefighter trapped inside the fire engine, so John hauled himself up the side of the overturned truck and wrenched open the door.
Suddenly everything went quiet, and John hadn't even realized how loud the roaring had gotten; it was like walking out of a rock concert and realizing your ears were out of whack the moment you tried to hold a normal conversation. Then the ground started rumbling again, and there was a huge boom, glass shattering out of all the nearby buildings and raining down on their heads.
In the distance, lava started shooting out of the tar pits.
"Well," John said. "That's not good."
It did look pretty awesome, though. Except for the part where lava was overflowing onto Wilshire Boulevard and heading their way fast.
John dropped himself into the fire engine and grabbed the driver's arms, hauling the guy onto his shoulder. It hurt like a son of a bitch, and John wasn't sure how he climbed out of the engine with all the extra weight, but he never left a man behind. John dropped the driver into the outstretched arms of a couple firefighters and climbed off the engine just in time to see the lava engulf his truck. The tires blew.
It sucked. John really liked that truck, and filling out the insurance claim for lava was going to be hilarious.
John ran over to Dr. Keller. She and some other firefighters were hauling the injured men into her SUV.
"I'm taking them to Cedars!" she shouted.
"I'm gonna borrow your phone," John said. He reached into the front and grabbed her car phone, dialing Operations. "Lorne, we're at Level One here. Close all the I-10 off-ramps for La Brea, La Cienega, Fairfax. Ten-block perimeter."
"Yes, sir," Lorne said.
"This is a declaration of emergency, we need immediate assistance from county, state, and federal. All available National Guard units to this site. Oh, and air tankers. We kinda need water."
"What's going on out there?" Lorne asked.
"Oh, you know. Volcano," John said.
***
When Rodney finally checked his messages, he called O.E.M. and someone named Lorne instructed him to get his ass to Wilshire and Stanley, Sheppard's words, sorry, sir. Rodney and Zelenka pulled up to madness. Fire engines, police, lava.
Rodney fumbled with the seatbelt. "Let me out here. You head back to CIGS."
"What? No," Zelenka protested.
"You head back to CIGS, coordinate from there. Call Elizabeth. Make sure she's okay," Rodney said.
Zelenka wavered. "I can't abandon you here."
"You're not abandoning me, you moron. Somebody needs to go back to CIGS and let them know what the hell is going on." Rodney got out of the Humvee with his bag of equipment and banged his fist against the door. Zelenka hesitated a long moment before driving away.
Rodney walked forward into the chaos and paused for a moment once he caught sight of the eruption. It was magnificent. And totally, completely insane. There was an explosion and a whistling sound, and Rodney looked up to see a globe of molten rock flying their way.
"Get down!" somebody shouted. "Take cover!"
"No no no no!" Rodney called to them. "What are you doing? That's not -- watch it! Don't take your eyes off it until you know where it's going to land. You there -- move move move!"
Rodney ducked and covered his ears with his hands as the rock hit, then stood up hesitantly to assess the damage.
"Haven't you people ever seen a lava bomb before?" he demanded. The firefighters stared at him dumbly.
Rodney heard a familiar voice and turned on his heel, seeing Sheppard gesturing at a few uniformed police officers. For some reason, knowing that Sheppard was there made Rodney feel a wave of relief. It was incredibly irritating. Rodney walked over to him.
"Hey, fancy meeting you here," Sheppard said, patting one of the uniforms on the shoulder.
"What? What?" Rodney said. "Are you insane?"
"Okay, so, volcano," Sheppard said, pointing at the eruption in the tar pits. "What do we do?"
"Evacuate the west side. It's going to destroy everything in its path until it hits the ocean," Rodney said.
"That's a lot of people to move," Sheppard said as if there were other options.
"So?" Rodney demanded. "It's a volcano! It doesn't care about population density!"
"And your strategy is to run away?"
Rodney boggled at him. "Volcano. It's not the rabbit of Caerbannog!"
Sheppard grimaced. Ash was collecting in his crazy sticky-uppy hair. "Think we can channel it?"
"What? No! Are you insane? I already asked you that. It would be impossi--"
"With concrete," Sheppard said, motioning with his hands. "Direct the flow."
Rodney snapped his fingers and pointed at Sheppard. "It'll never work. Let's try it."
Sheppard snatched a phone out of the hand of a passing news reporter.
"Hey, that's my phone!" the guy yelled.
"Oh, my God," Rodney said. "Volcano. Why does nobody seem to grasp the gravity of the situation?"
"Lorne," Sheppard was saying, "I need all the K-rails we have in the city. We're gonna build a corridor."
***
John hung up the phone and saw that McKay was lying on the ground on his belly and peering at the street.
"What are you doing?" John asked curiously.
McKay pointed. "The pavement is angled. The lava flow is going to shift that way."
"Shit," John said.
"Exactly," Rodney said.
"Hey," John said. He gestured over a uniformed officer. Big guy with awesome dreads. "Lieutenant, what's down that street?"
"Residential. Nursing homes, houses, hospitals," he said.
"Shit," John said again, staring down Fairfax Avenue. A few minutes later, trucks started pulling up with his K-rails. "What's your name, Lieutenant?
"Ronon Dex."
"Ronon," John said. "Cool. Come with me."
John jogged over to the flatbed trucks and greeted the driver with a nod. "All right, we're gonna build a corridor out of these things, keep everything flowing down Wilshire and headed west --"
"Only 82 K-rails here," Ronon said about half a second before John noticed it himself. "Don't think that's gonna be enough."
"Where are the rest of them?" John asked the driver.
"Freeways are gridlocked," the driver said. "That's all we got."
"We could knock over some buildings, make a dam," Ronon mused, scratching his beard.
"Huh," John said. He walked over to the Fire Chief. "How long do you think before this gets to Fairfax, Sam?"
She squinted at the lava and tucked her blonde hair behind her ear. "I make it ten minutes."
"Okay, we're going to use these K-rails to build a wall at the intersection of Wilshire and Fairfax," John announced. He made a u-shape with his hands. "Like a cul-de-sac."
McKay shoved in next to him. "Wait for the lava to pool, and then dump all the water you've got on it. It might form a crust, slow it down."
John stared at him. "Seriously?"
McKay shrugged. His eyes were incredibly blue. "Worked in Iceland. Oh, and it's like the world's biggest sauna. Great for your pores. What? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"You heard the man," John said. "Let's do this thing."
And they built themselves a goddamn wall, and then the lava came, and John dumped a fuckton of water on it.
***
Rodney heard the news over the radio. Lava was in the subway tunnels, and Sheppard had his hands full up top coordinating the water drop. It wasn't like he wanted to do it, not after what happened last time, but Rodney told himself that somebody had to, and he was the only one who was qualified. And so he grabbed his bag of equipment and made a police officer drop him at the closest entrance to the subway.
He knew there was no way the trains were running and that the power was out, so it wasn't like he could get electrocuted by the third rail, but still.
Rodney walked so far down the tunnel that he considered, reconsidered, turned back once, and was in the middle of giving himself a pep talk when he finally found a cave-in with jets of steam coming out of the rock.
"Oh, no no no no," Rodney said. He jammed a temperature gauge into the dirt. Possibly he prayed in spite his rather staunch atheism. It wasn't like anyone else could hear. Except God. If God existed. There wasn't any empirical evidence.
The temperature gauge beeped. 527F and climbing. Climbing way too fast.
"Oh, my God," Rodney said. He took out the temperature gauge and ran out of the tunnel like he was being chased by something large and rabid.
***
John and Ronon surveyed the wall and the cooling lava, ash still raining down on their heads.
"Dude," Ronon said, holding out his fist.
John bumped it. "I know, right?"
The Fire Chief waved John over. She was on the radio. "Sheppard. Your geophysicist wants to speak with you."
"Yeah?" John said.
"She got my field right. Nobody ever does that," McKay said over the radio. "What's her name, again? Sam?"
"What do you want, McKay?" John asked loudly.
"We've got a problem," McKay said. "A big problem. Really big. And we passed worst case scenario, like, hours ago."
"Lay it on me."
"Lava in the subway tunnels," McKay said.
John rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Of course there is."
"How soon can you meet me at Wilshire and Western?" McKay asked.
"Pretty soon," John said. "Sheppard out."
And then John stole a police motorcycle. Technically he had the authority, and it wasn't like anybody was using it at the time. He drove up Wilshire until he saw McKay standing on the sidewalk with his hands on his hips, face streaked with ash.
McKay pointed at the street. Steam was venting out of an open grate which led to the subway tunnel system. "I need to get down there. Got any rope?"
"What? No," John said, parking the motorcycle.
"Oh, fine, I think I have some in here somewhere," McKay said, digging through his bag.
"No, I mean it's too dangerous," John said. "I'll go."
"Oh, please, you don't even know what I'm looking for," McKay said.
John grabbed McKay's shirt. "Then tell me."
McKay crossed his arms. It did good things for his biceps. "No."
"If I'm not going, you're not going," John said.
"Fine," McKay said.
They stared at each other for a moment, until John said, "You don't have a video camera in that bag, do you?"
McKay blinked. "Actually, I --"
A column of flame rose from the grate, and John grabbed McKay and pushed him out of the way. They hit the street hard, John landing half on top of McKay in what was kind of a compromising position. McKay was pretty solid under his loose T-shirt.
"Um," McKay said. His hands were on John's hips.
"Right," John said, and rolled off him. They both crawled to the edge of the grate, attempting to peer down it without burning off their faces. Lava was flowing through the subway tunnel below.
"The tunnels are insulating it," McKay said. "Keeping it superheated. Oh, my God, it's moving fast."
"What's it going to do?" John asked.
McKay opened and closed his crooked mouth for a moment, his eyes wide. "It'll keep going until it hits a dead end, and then it's going to punch through the surface."
John was already dialing Operations. "Lorne. Where does the red line tunnel end?"
"You mean the last stop?" Lorne asked.
"No, the tunnel itself."
Lorne muffled the receiver. John could hear him shouting questions at people. "They stopped drilling under the Beverly Center, sir."
John slammed his hand on the ground. It hurt. A lot. "They stopped drilling next to Cedars-Sinai Hospital?"
"Of course they did," McKay moaned.
John grabbed McKay's shirt again. "How long before it hits La Cienega?"
"I don't know, let me think!" McKay closed his hands. He wiggled his fingers, whispering numbers under his breath.
"How long, McKay?" John demanded.
McKay's eyes popped open. "I don't know! Thirty minutes, maybe less."
"We've been sending all the injured to Cedars," John said. "We have to reroute this thing."
"What are you looking at me for?" Rodney asked as if he hadn't been supplying John with answers he needed the entire time.
"Talk to me, Lorne," John said. "Give me a picture of what's happening."
"We've got lava flow in a storm drain on Fairfax. Genesee transformer is out. We've got --"
"Storm drain?"
McKay visibly perked up. "What storm drain?"
"It dumps into Ballona Creek," Lorne said.
John said, "Ballona Creek --"
"-- goes to the ocean," Rodney said, snapping his fingers. "How close is it to Cedars?"
"Close enough," John said. "Get on the bike. We're going to the Beverly Center."
***
Rodney clutched at Sheppard's waist and tucked his forehead against his nape to avoid getting more ash in his eyes. Also because Sheppard was driving so fast that Rodney thought he might throw up. They screeched to a halt near the Beverly Center at San Vicente and 3rd, and Sheppard hopped off the motorcycle, nearly clocking Rodney in the face with his elbow. Rodney waited a moment to stand up. His legs were wobbly.
"Ford!" Sheppard called out. "Think you can blow up this street?"
A young man grinned widely. "Of course I can, sir. What did you have in mind?"
"We need a trench as wide as the street, deep as you can get it," Sheppard said.
"No no no no no," Rodney said. He dropped down to his knees and eyeballed the pavement, and it was just not good. "The street slopes the wrong way. You'll send the lava straight into the Beverly Center if you do that."
"Maybe it won't," Sheppard said.
"Look, just trust me, okay?" Rodney said. He rose to his feet and made a futile attempt to dust off his pants.
Sheppard frowned. "Then give me another plan, McKay."
"Evacuate the hospital."
The police Lieutenant with the dreads -- Rodney didn't remember his name, but he was pleased to see him there because he didn't seem to be afflicted with stupidity -- was shaking his head. "They're doing surgery on the street. We can't move them."
"I don't know what to do," Sheppard admitted. He wore a hangdog expression for about thirty seconds, and then suddenly turned around. "Unless..."
"Build a dam?" the Lieutenant said, raising an eyebrow.
"Ford," Sheppard said. He pointed at a high-rise building across the street; it appeared to be in the final phase of construction. "You've got less than 20 minutes to blow that up so it'll make a dam in front of the hospital."
Ford actually bounced on his toes. "Oh, this is gonna be so cool."
"You can't be serious," Rodney protested.
"Will it divert the flow?" Sheppard asked.
Rodney boggled at him. "Tell me you aren't serious!"
Sheppard grabbed his arms. "Will it work?"
Rodney considered it. He cocked his head. He thought about their other options, of which there were approximately none. "Do it."
"Yeah?" Sheppard asked. He smiled suddenly, and Rodney swooned for about a second. Possibly two.
Rodney nodded. "Oh, yeah."
***
Ford and his demolitions team set a speed record with the charges. John ordered the evacuation of the Beverly Center. The ground shook and lava punched through the street, spurting into the air. People screamed. People caught on fire.
Ford brought the building down. That part, at least, was seriously awesome.
McKay pounded on John's shoulder. "It's working. Oh, my God, it's working!"
Redirected by the debris of the high-rise, lava flowed down the street toward the storm drain, and then through the storm drain and into the Pacific Ocean.
"This is the single coolest thing I have ever done," John said.
"I know!" McKay crowed, and hugged him.
John awkwardly patted his back. "Uh."
McKay let him go and took a step back. "I'm starving. Do have any food? No? Not even a PowerBar?"
"Sorry," John shrugged.
"I'm hypoglycemic, and I'm starting to feel a little unwell, so if anyone has, say, an apple? Grape juice? Crackers? Anyone?" McKay looked worried now.
"Here," Ronon said. He shoved a candy bar at McKay. "It melted."
"Oh, my God, thank you," McKay said, and hugged Ronon, too. It was quick and obviously heartfelt, like a little boy on his birthday. McKay let go and unwrapped the candy bar, shoving most of it in his mouth and making some pretty obscene moaning noises around the chocolate.
"I could use a shower and a beer," John said. He shoved his hand through his hair and promptly got a load of ash in his eyes.
Rodney snorted at him and accidentally inhaled some chocolate. He bent over coughing. It sounded bad, and it wasn't until Ronon threatened to use the Heimlich maneuver that Rodney managed to get enough breath to make a reedy protest.
"I probably should go back to my desk," John said.
McKay blinked at him. "Oh. Right, yes, I suspect you'll have your hands full over the next few days. I'll just, uh..."
"Well," John said. He pushed his hands in his back pockets. "I guess we could use an expert geophysicist on hand for a little while. Save us time calling CIGS for a consult."
"Really?" McKay looked hopeful.
"Yeah, come on," John said.
They hitched a ride back to John's office building in a squad car. John hated sitting in the back with no way to open the doors, but he was pretty sure that even if he could flag down a taxi, he probably didn't have enough money in his wallet to pay for it.
"So how did you get into this whole thing?" McKay asked.
"I perform well under pressure," John quipped. The truth was that John didn't really know. He'd sort of fallen into it through a friend of a friend after the Air Force showed him the door. He excelled in combat situations, and people told him he was a unique strategist, that he thought outside the box. And, John had to admit, he kind of failed completely at the little things that made up daily life. John preferred dealing with the big picture any day.
"Hmm," McKay said, eyeing him.
"What about you?" John asked.
"What, seriously? Our planet is fascinating, and the discipline is so... so quantitative. It's not ephemeral. It doesn't just go away." McKay seemed almost wistful, staring out the window of the car. John wondered what he'd lost, what hadn't gone right to put that expression on his face.
"Here we are," John said as they pulled up to his office building. "You can tell me the rest later."
McKay didn't look convinced. "Of course. Oh, can I use your phone?"
***
"Yes," Radek answered the phoned absently.
"Zelenka?"
"Rodney!" Radek exclaimed, standing up for no reason. "You're alive!"
"Obviously," Rodney said. "Did you get brained by a chunk of pumice, or something?"
"We were worried," Radek said, sitting down again. If Rodney was well enough to insult, it meant he would be fine.
"Really?" Rodney asked, sounding unreasonably pleased.
"Yes. Dr. Kavanaugh even started a betting pool on your chances of survival."
Rodney hissed. "I'll crush him under the might of my first-hand observations of volcanic activity in an urban environment."
"Many awards, many papers and presentations at conferences," Radek said soothingly. "You will make him very jealous."
"Of course. Look, I'll be liaising at O.E.M. for a little while," Rodney said.
Radek said, "Oh really?"
"Yes, really," Rodney snapped. "They need an expert!"
"How is Sheppard?" Radek asked.
Rodney made a grumpy noise. "He's fine. How are Elizabeth and the girls?"
"Good, good. Elizabeth's mother had power so she took the girls over there. She says that they spent the morning eating cake and watching Sesame Street."
"Hmph. I think I'm jealous. Anyway, if you need to reach me, call this number," Rodney said, rattling off a telephone number.
Radek scribbled it down on a piece of recycling paper. "Got it."
"Well, then. Let me know when Grodin's funeral is," Rodney said, and hung up the phone.
***
Rodney woke up on a strange couch. It was dark and he could hear water running; Rodney squinted at the furniture and tried to ascertain where he was. He really wasn't suave enough for one-night stands -- his charm was elusive, whatever -- but perhaps last night he'd gotten lucky?
And then Rodney remembered that the reason why he reeked of smoke wasn't because he'd spent last night in a bar.
Sheppard walked out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel and froze when he saw that Rodney was awake. "Hey."
"Hi?" Rodney said. He was very tired and Sheppard was very attractive. It was a stern test of his vocabulary.
"I needed to walk my dog, and you were kind of dead to the world. Couldn't find your wallet, so I brought you to my place," Sheppard said.
Rodney blinked and tilted his head. He had vague memories of Sheppard walking him to and from a taxi. "Did you really say 'upsy-daisy' or am I hallucinating?"
Sheppard jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "I'll just get dressed."
"Oh, do you mind?" Rodney asked, laboriously prying himself from the clutches of Sheppard's couch.
Sheppard stared at him, eyes wide and his mouth open. "Uh."
"You didn't use all the hot water, did you?" Rodney stumbled into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. He slapped his hand over his eyes and repeated, "'Do you mind?' Oh, my god."
Rodney located the spare towels and then stripped off his dirty, smoky clothes. He fiddled with the shower controls until he figured out all the handles and valves, and let out a loud groan once hot water was pounding against his shoulders and neck. Showering in someone else's bathroom was weird, and Rodney had never quite got the trick of it. Nothing was where it was supposed to be, and he was always worried that the bathroom door was going to fly open the moment he pulled back the shower curtain to step out of the tub.
Rodney dried off and knotted a towel firmly around his waist, picking up his dirty clothes with distaste.
"Sheppard?" he called hesitantly.
Sheppard poked his head around a corner. "Yeah?"
"You wouldn't happen to have a washing machine, would you?"
"Nope," Sheppard said. "But I have some clothes you can borrow."
Rodney highly doubted that, but followed Sheppard into his bedroom anyway. It was a bare room, the only mess obviously from the earthquake. Sheppard's dog was sleeping on his bed, and predictably, the dog was adorable.
"Golden Retriever?" Rodney asked.
Sheppard glanced at the dog. "Yeah, that's Max."
"Planck?"
Sheppard shook his head. "Headroom. Dog's got a unique sense of humor."
There were a few thick books on the night table, a pair of reading glasses, and several single issues of comics. When Sheppard turned away from his dresser with a T-shirt and some sweatpants, Rodney knew he just had to go for it.
"I'm going to do something now," Rodney said. "And if you want to blame it on adrenaline or temporary insanity or... or smoke inhalation, that's fine. I just -- I have this hypothesis I want to test because I really, really need to know if I'm completely off base here, and I'm going to do it now. Sorry."
Rodney dropped his smoky clothes and kissed Sheppard. He cupped Sheppard's face and opened his mouth, and put everything he had behind it, all his 'you're really incredibly intelligent and attractive and very fit and you remembered that I was allergic when ordering dinner at the office, and you like Batman'.
Sheppard didn't respond for one long moment, and Rodney was just about ready to start panicking when Sheppard grabbed Rodney's biceps and kissed him back. The first one was so hard and fast that it stung, and the next was slow and dirty, languid and with a lot of tongue. Rodney approved of this very much.
Sheppard backed away first and stared, his mouth wet and red.
"Oh," Rodney said and touched his lips.
Sheppard cleared his throat. "So, was your hypothesis correct?"
"It has merit," Rodney said. "I, uh... I think it will require further testing."
"Cool." Sheppard smiled, and it did funny things to Rodney's insides. "You hungry?"
"Yes, actually," Rodney said. "I'm famished."
Sheppard snorted. "I'll be in the kitchen."
Rodney changed quickly after Sheppard left the room. Everything was too tight. The sweatpants clung to his thighs and Rodney wasn't certain that he could lift his arms over his head while wearing Sheppard's T-shirt. But perhaps it wasn't as bad as all that, because when Rodney walked into the kitchen, Sheppard looked him up and down with an expression that made Rodney's toes curl.
"Captain Crunch?" Sheppard offered.
"Don't mind if I do," Rodney said. "Is there coffee?"
the end.
Volcano
Stargate: Atlantis. PG-13, John/Rodney. ~8,800 words.
An SGA AU based upon the movie Volcano, in which John is into disaster management and Rodney is into geophysics: "Oh, my God," Rodney said. "*Volcano*. Why does nobody seem to grasp the gravity of the situation?"
Beta by nestra, although any remaining errors are my fault. Written by request for Sweet Charity.
The Office of Emergency Management (O.E.M.) is a permanent division of the City of Los Angeles.
In the event of an emergency or natural disaster, its director has the power to control and command all the resources of the city.
***
John turned over in bed and stared at his alarm clock. 5:58am and the alarm wasn't even set. He didn't need to get out of bed. In fact, John didn't have to do anything for the next two weeks. Some of his buddies from Colorado Springs were supposed to fly down and visit him during his vacation, but their plans had fallen through last week and John didn't know how he was going to fill the time without some kind of natural or man-made disaster to fix.
Maybe he'd take up surfing. Or speed chess. Video golf.
John turned over again and pulled a pillow over his head to block out the light, but Max whined and licked John's elbow, so John got out of bed and took his dog for a run. The city felt less crowded at 6am. John liked that. People kind of made him claustrophobic sometimes.
When the earthquake hit, John was sitting on his couch with his hand in a Captain Crunch box and watching the Today show. He dropped the cereal box and lurched for the doorway of the living room. Max cowered by the couch and howled.
"I hear you, buddy," John said.
The quake was short and didn't do much to John's apartment except spill the stack of Sudoku books on his coffee table. He didn't have much to knock over, just a guitar propped in the corner and a Johnny Cash poster above the couch. John didn't really go in for knick-knacks.
John rescued the box of Captain Crunch from his dog and went to change out of his sweats. An earthquake meant there'd be work to do, and John was already bored out of his mind.
***
"9:14?" Radek asked, uncapping a pen to mark the time of the earthquake on the seismograph.
Grodin checked his cell phone display and agreed, "9:14."
As Radek wrote, he said, "We need to prepare a press conference."
"We can set up in the gymnasium," Grodin said. "Plenty of room in there."
"Shall we call Rodney?" Radek asked.
Grodin pulled a face. "Must we?"
Radek considered for a moment, pushing up his glasses with his index finger. "It is unnecessary. He will have felt the earthquake, and he cannot resist the camera."
"Ham," Grodin muttered.
"Press conference," Radek said, gently nudging Grodin toward the door. "Podium. Maps."
"I know how to do my job, Dr. Zelenka," Grodin said, glaring down his nose at Radek.
"Yes," Radek said agreeably. Grodin left. Radek continued observing the seismograph for twenty or thirty minutes until Grodin came back.
"He's not here!" Grodin hissed.
"What?" Radek asked.
"Dr. McKay hasn't arrived yet," Grodin said. "You'll have to do the press conference."
Radek stared at him in dismay as Grodin pulled him out of the lab and down the hallway toward the gymnasium. He dug in his heels when he saw the crowd of journalists and cameramen surrounding the podium.
"I can't," Radek insisted.
"You can."
"I can't."
Grodin put his hands on his hips. "It's easy. You only have to say a few sentences. You have all the data right here."
"Then you do it," Radek said, and attempted to flee.
Grodin grabbed him. "You're the senior seismologist."
"You don't understand," Radek said. He wiped at his forehead and his palm came away damp with sweat. "I have a phobia of speaking in public. I go out there, I freeze up. Cannot talk. I look like I belong in an exhibit at Madame Tussauds."
Grodin rolled his eyes. "Please, you can't honestly tell me --"
Just then, Rodney sailed into the room. He snapped his fingers and held out his hand, and Radek automatically handed over his clipboard. Rodney's eyes darted back and forth as he processed the information on the page.
Absently, Rodney waved at the blue button-down shirt he was wearing under a hideous tweed jacket. "Does this color make my eyes pop? Simpson said it would make my eyes pop."
"Why are you taking fashion advice from Simpson?" Radek asked.
Rodney huffed. "Well, I'm certainly not asking you."
Radek had to shrug in agreement. He honestly didn't remember getting dressed this morning, although he was certain Elizabeth would have stopped him from leaving the house without his trousers.
Rodney handed back the clipboard and took out a pair of glasses from his breast pocket, slipping them on. They were made of plain glass; Rodney's vision was fine. Radek thought the affectation was ridiculous and had given Rodney a pocket protector for Christmas last year. Rodney had regifted it to Miko for the office Secret Santa.
"Yes, well," Rodney said finally, squaring his shoulders. "Onward."
Rodney walked into the gymnasium and stood behind the podium, immediately launching into a speech as the news crews scrambled into action. "Good morning, everyone. I hope you've all had your coffee and that your cameraman isn't in the toilet. Right. This was a small to moderate earthquake. The epicenter was in Palmdale, about 30 miles north of the city's center..."
***
John didn't actually intend to sneak into his office, but his people were distracted by the earthquake and it just sort of happened. He could monitor everything from here, and this way, Esperanza in HR wouldn't give him the stink eye for failing to take some of his stockpiled vacation time. He had one eye on his laptop screen as he opened and closed his desk drawers, searching for a Clif Bar or a box of microwave popcorn, when Lorne opened the door and walked halfway across John's office before he realized John was in it.
"Excuse me, sir," Lorne said and stood at attention, his eyebrows furrowed.
"At ease, Lorne," John joked. "I keep telling you; we're all civilians now."
Lorne grimaced. "Sorry, sir. Once a commanding officer, always a commanding officer."
"Yeah," John said. The silence was awkward, like when you realized that you had picked a steak house to meet your vegan blind date. Lorne was only six months out of the Marines, and some habits were hard to break.
"You didn't have to come in, you know," Lorne said finally. He jerked his thumb at the bullpen behind him. "Aside from one water main in Cahuenga, we've got gas, power, phone lines, everything."
"Yeah, well," John said. His phone rang. John picked up the receiver and said, "Sheppard."
"I am not surprised to find you at work," Teyla said.
"Mayor," John said. Lorne made a tactful exit. "I thought you were on vacation."
"Likewise," Teyla said. She sounded as calm as ever, but the fact that she was calling at all meant that she was worried. "Should I be canceling my plans, John?"
"Little quake, nothing to worry about. You should enjoy your time off, Teyla," John said. Just then, Lorne poked his head inside John's office door and signaled him urgently. "Look, I gotta take care of something. I'll check in with you later."
"I will keep my schedule open," Teyla said.
John hung up the phone. "Where's the fire?"
"Funny you should say that," Lorne said. "Code 6 at MacArthur Park. They're reporting casualties."
"Crap," John said.
***
John ducked under the caution tape, and five seconds later the department head of Water and Power was up his ass.
"What are you doing here?" Woolsey demanded. His tie was slightly askew and he looked grim.
"Sightseeing," John said. He shifted the maps he was carrying and pushed up his sunglasses for a moment. "Heard you lost some guys."
Woolsey huffed and straightened his posture. It didn't add much height. "It was a freak accident in a storm drain. A burst steam pipe. No fire, no explosions. No continuing threat. Your presence here is unnecessary, Sheppard."
John nodded at the blackened leg poking out of a body bag as the coroner zipped it shut. "Steam did that?"
Woolsey stepped in front of John and tried to block his view. "Yes. We'll copy you on the report. Now, if you don't mind --"
John dodged him and approached the storm drain. He peered over the edge. "Mind if I have a look for myself?"
Woolsey twitched, but then someone shouted John's name.
"Sheppard!" Caldwell shouted again, and ducked under the caution tape.
John waved him over and spread out the maps on the hood of a squad car. "Caldwell. I want to show you something."
Woolsey smiled humorlessly at Caldwell and asked, "How are your little trains doing?"
Caldwell stared until Woolsey started twitching again. "Sheppard. What do you have for me?"
John drew his finger along the sewer and storm drain on the map of MacArthur Park. "This is where your problem is," John said to Woolsey.
"Was," Woolsey interjected. "I assure you that it's no longer an issue."
John ignored him and placed a transparency of the subway system over the map, which ran alongside the storm drain death trap of doom. "This is your red line tunnel," John said to Caldwell. "I want to shut it down."
"Do you really think this is necessary?" Caldwell asked. He crossed his arms. "A little steam won't penetrate five feet of concrete."
Somebody's beeper went off, and they all automatically checked their belts.
"It's me," Woolsey said. "Are we done here?"
"Look, maybe the earthquake screwed something up down there, I don't know. But we should shut things down until we --"
"You just aren't happy unless you're declaring an emergency, are you?" Woolsey sniped as he walked away.
John rolled his eyes behind his sunglasses. "Actually, I enjoy Ferris wheels, Big Ten football games, and anything that goes more than two hundred miles per hour. Sir."
Caldwell watched Woolsey check his receding hairline in the side-view mirror of a DWP van. "30,000 people think they're taking the red line home tonight, Sheppard. What do you expect me to do?"
John shrugged. "Put on extra buses?"
Caldwell scowled. "Fine."
Caldwell turned on his heel. John leaned against the squad car and stared at the storm drain again. He just wanted to make sure everybody made it home safe; it didn't matter how. And he'd rather put himself in danger than risk anyone else.
***
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Lorne asked as they started unloading gear from the back of the O.E.M. truck.
"I don't feel like waiting for a report to tell me what's down there," John said. "What about you, Ford?"
Ford grinned. "I'm with you, sir."
Lorne sighed. "Just checking, sir."
John and Ford suited up their protective gear and oxygen tanks and then climbed into the storm drain while Lorne stayed in the truck to monitor their progress. And to call 911 in case something bad happened. John was foolhardy sometimes, but not completely stupid.
"It's hot," John commented once they made it into the storm drain.
"Hot?" Ford said. "I'm roasting like a turkey. It's hotter down here than my apartment was that one time my college roommate tried to grow weed."
"How high was your heating bill?" Lorne asked on the radio.
"No jury would've convicted me," Ford said.
A rat ran over John's foot. His gear clanked as he jumped out of the way of two more.
"Sir, Chief Landry is on the line, and he would like to speak to you," Lorne said over the radio.
"Kinda busy right now," John said, advancing farther into the storm drain.
Lorne didn't say anything for a moment. "I'll... ask the Chief of Police if he'd like to leave a message, then."
"You do that," John said.
"What the hell does he think he's doing?" Landry's voice came over the radio. "He's stepping on Public Works' toes."
"Sheppard felt that the issue was time-sensitive, sir," Lorne said.
"Tell him he's not in Kansas anymore," Landry said dryly. "We have procedures here."
"Chief Landry would like me to tell you that you're not in Kansas anymore, sir," Lorne said.
"It was Colorado," John said.
A moment later, Lorne said over the radio, "Chief Landry still wants to know why you're in a sewer and not at your desk, sir."
Ford's equipment started beeping, and John felt free to ignore the radio for a moment. He saw a steam vent in front of them, and then the tunnel started shaking and their protective gear began to melt from the heat. The plastic tubing on their masks went all goopy, like plastic wrap in a microwave, and walking was about as fun as trying to find a seat on a moving city bus while completely blotto.
John was sweating a river down the back of his suit. He'd never been this hot, not even in Kandahar at the height of summer while watching a simoon form. John grabbed Ford's arm and they hauled ass back to the ladder.
"Are you all right, sir?" Lorne asked as John and Ford climbed out of the storm drain, their gear steaming. John ripped off his facemask.
"Get LAPD on the line. We need to evacuate the area right now," John said. "Cut off gas, power, everything. And find a geologist."
***
John was in the O.E.M. bullpen and trying to avoid one of Woolsey's lackeys when Caldwell arrived with a blue-eyed stranger who had broad shoulders. Caldwell was actually squabbling with the guy, and John rarely saw Caldwell lose his cool.
"Blast away!" the stranger was saying, gesturing wildly with his hands. "Who cares about geologic transform faults?"
"Stop insinuating that I'm not concerned about public safety," Caldwell snapped.
"Possibly I'm insinuating that because you aren't," the stranger said, then turned to John. "Are you Sheppard?"
"Yep," John said.
"Dr. Rodney McKay," McKay said, holding out his hand. John shook it. "I'm from CIGS."
"Are you my geologist?" John asked.
McKay held up a finger. "Geophysicist, actually."
"Cool," John said. "Can you tell me what's under MacArthur Park?"
McKay grimaced. "Not with any certainty."
"But you can guess," John said.
McKay lifted his chin. "Of course I can, to a reasonable degree, but --"
"We ran trains under MacArthur Park all day," Caldwell interrupted. "We didn't experience any trouble."
"Hmm," McKay said. "Your scientific analysis is unassailable. Say, didn't you collapse Hollywood Boulevard?"
Caldwell's frown was epic. "Until someone can produce any hard evidence or some demonstrable risk, the trains stay on schedule. Excuse me."
They watched Caldwell leave.
"So," John and McKay said at the same time.
"So," John said after a moment. "How do I find out what's down there?"
"I'll get my equipment and meet you there," McKay said.
"Awesome," John said.
***
Rodney found Zelenka in his lab. He grabbed Zelenka by the wrist and dragged him toward the door.
"Where are we going?" Zelenka asked.
"MacArthur Park," Rodney said.
"Hmm," Zelenka said. "Did someone leave a cake out in the rain?"
"Ha ha, very funny. You should try your hand as a stand-up comedian when I fire you for incompetence," Rodney said.
They arrived at the garage. Rodney had left a small stack of equipment next to the Humvee. Most of what they needed was already inside the vehicle.
Zelenka helped Rodney pick up one of the oxygen tanks. "You'll never fire me."
"Just because you married the director of CIGS --" Rodney began saying, then cut himself off because now was not the time for their weekly argument regarding workplace nepotism. "Whatever. Get in the car."
Rodney drove them to MacArthur Park, occasionally slapping Zelenka's hands away from the radio dial. Once Sheppard waved them through the caution tape, Rodney and Zelenka immediately began taking readings.
"Look at this," Rodney said, shoving a clipboard full of printouts into Sheppard's hands.
"Neat," Sheppard said. He glanced at the columns of numbers. "What am I looking at?"
Rodney pointed emphatically at the pond in MacArthur Park. "That lake was 62 degrees yesterday. Today it's up to 68."
Sheppard leaned against Rodney's Humvee and squinted at the lake. "Huh."
Sheppard looked ridiculously attractive while doing that, but Rodney was prepared to ignore it in the face of potential stupidity and overwhelming dimness. "Listen, Sheppard. It takes a geological event to heat a million gallons of water by six degrees in twelve hours."
"What's a geological event?" Sheppard asked.
Rodney's eyes went wide. He flapped his hands. He shot Zelenka a speaking look of horror over Sheppard's shoulder. "Are you kidding me? You have got to be kidding me. How can you be the director of the Office of Emergency Management in Los Angeles when you don't know what a geological event is? Did you seriously get your job by sleeping with Mayor Emmagen? Because I thought those rumors were ridiculous after details leaked about your exemplary military service record, but I'm prepared to reconsider unless someone tells me that you're kidding."
"He's kidding," someone called out.
"Sorry," said another member of Sheppard's team, who actually looked contrite. Blue eyes. Strong jaw. Unfortunate military haircut. "He likes to do that."
"So what are you thinking," Sheppard asked lazily. "Fissure?"
"Yes, it's possible," Rodney said, pleasantly surprised. "Magma could rise to the surface."
"Magma?" Sheppard said.
"Lava," Zelenka supplied helpfully.
"Yeah, thanks," Sheppard said, somehow without sounding like a dick. "Seriously. Lava?"
"It's very unlikely," Rodney hastened to add. "But it is a valid possibility."
"You guys have a history of that sort of thing here in L.A.?"
Zelenka pushed up his glasses. "There's no history of anything until it happens."
Sheppard looked up at the sun and grimaced. "That's really not what I wanted to hear."
"Yes, well, I'm used to people saying that when I talk," Rodney said.
"Keep me posted," Sheppard said.
"Of course, gladly," Rodney said.
"Gladly?" Zelenka said when Sheppard walked away. "Gladly?"
"Shut up?" Rodney offered, and then chased after Sheppard. "Excuse me? Where do you think you're going?"
Sheppard sighed and looked a little pissy. "I can't tell people that our demonstrable risk is lava."
"Then let me go down there," Rodney insisted. "We're not going to find anything conclusive sitting here with our thumbs up our asses."
"It's too dangerous," Sheppard said.
"Oh, please," Rodney said. "My hobby is volcanology. Do you know how high my insurance premiums are?"
"Sorry," Sheppard said. "Seven people died already. I can't risk it."
Rodney turned on his heel and marched back to his Humvee. "Hmph."
"Are you done pulling each other's pigtails?" Zelenka asked.
Rodney glared at him. "I'm doing nothing of the kind."
"Oh, please," Zelenka said. He looked at Rodney over the tops of his glasses. "What's the verdict?"
"Sheppard won't let us into the storm drain," Rodney said.
Zelenka looked around, nodding at all the police cars and Public Works vehicles. "So when are we going down there?"
"Pick me up at 4am," Rodney said. "Bring coffee."
"Of course," Zelenka said.
"A lot of coffee. One of those big boxes, like a portable tureen or something." Rodney made the shape of a barrel with his arms.
"Do I look like an idiot?" Zelenka asked, then sighed. "Don't answer that."
***
"I can't go down there," Zelenka said as Rodney and Grodin suited up. "Claustrophobia."
"First public speaking, now this? What aren't you afraid of?" Grodin demanded.
"Clowns," Rodney said. "He's a freak."
"My father was a clown," Zelenka said defensively. "He was a very lovable man."
Rodney pulled on the suit's protective helmet. "Ugh, I feel like I'm the Prince of Space in this getup."
"Godzilla vs. Megalon," Zelenka said.
"Cavedwellers," Rodney said.
"C.H.U.D.," Grodin said.
"You had to go there, didn't you?" Rodney said and started climbing down the ladder into the dark.
Zelenka pointed at the storm drain. "Get down in the hole."
"Yes, sir," Grodin said flippantly, following Rodney. When they both made it down the ladder, Rodney looked around the storm drain while Grodin pawed at the walls. "Looks like sulfur."
"Hmm," Rodney said absently, moving down the tunnel. "Can you hear me, Zelenka?"
"Loud and clear," Zelenka responded on the radio.
"Maybe traces of magnesium, nickel... what do you think?" Grodin asked.
"I think you should talk less and take more samples," Rodney said. He had pretty limited vision inside his helmet, but he was fairly certainly that Grodin rolled his eyes.
"This is interesting," Grodin said as he knelt down in the tunnel about 20 feet away. And then the tunnel started shaking.
"Grodin!" Rodney called, watching part of the tunnel collapse until Grodin was clawing at the edge. The tunnel shook and lurched under his hands and knees like a suspension bridge in high wind.
"Help!" Grodin shouted. "Oh, God, help me!"
Rodney crawled over and grabbed his arms, pulling as hard as he could. Rodney was stronger than he looked, but with the combined weight of Grodin's body and the tank strapped to Grodin's back, Rodney couldn't budge him.
"You have to dump the tank," Rodney said. "Grodin. Peter! Listen to me. You have to dump the tank. I can't pull you up!"
"I'm burning!" Grodin screamed. "I'm burning! Oh, God!"
And then there was an explosion, incredible heat, the glow up something rising from below. Rodney got knocked back by the force of it, Grodin's arms slipping out of his hands. Rodney ended up on his back, staring at the ceiling, gasping for breath. When he finally managed to get up on his elbows, Grodin was gone.
"Rodney!" Zelenka said over the radio. "Rodney, Peter -- are you all right?"
Rodney crawled over to the edge and peered into the dark. There was nothing there but the abyss and the overwhelming stench of Hephaestus' armpit.
"Holy shit," Rodney said.
***
John had gone home to feed his dog and so he was home when the big one hit not long after 5am. John woke up when his copy of War and Peace fell on his head and nearly took out his eye with the metal alumni bookmark stuck in the middle of the first chapter. When the shaking finally stopped, he spared a minute to pull on a pair of jeans over his boxers and put on some shoes, and then he was in his truck driving to work while dialing the direct line to his office.
"Operations."
"This is Sheppard."
Lorne broke in. "Sir. No report yet of damages to any of the hospitals, but 911 is offline. We have reports that the freeways are clear."
"Get the helicopters up," John said. "If we don't have enough pilots, I can take one up when I get there."
"Where are you, sir?" Lorne asked.
"Heading east on Wilshire. Coming up on the tar pits. There's low visibility. No traffic lights." John could hear Lorne typing on a keyboard. "Didn't you go home last night?"
"Got stood up by my date," Lorne said. "Figured I'd make myself useful."
"That sucks," John said, and dropped the phone when the manholes started exploding.
"Sir? Sir! What's happening?" Lorne demanded.
John hit the brakes when huge chunks of something hail-like started hitting the roof of his truck. His windshield cracked. Huge clouds of black smoke began billowing out of the tar pits with flashes of something that looked like an electrical fire. John stared numbly for a moment, and then picked up his phone from the dirty foot well of his truck.
"Um," he said.
"Sir? Thank God. What's happening?"
"Um," John repeated, flooring his truck. "Kinda. Well. A flaming rock took out a billboard across the street and started a structural fire, so I think we should probably get a crew down here on, uh, Wilshire and Stanley."
"Can you elaborate, sir? What's happening?"
"Well," John said, jerking the wheel to avoid another car. "I think the tar pits are erupting."
"What?" Lorne asked.
"Get Dr. McKay. Tell him we've got Mount Doom coming out of La Brea," John said, and hung up the phone. He needed to concentrate. He felt like he was driving in Grand Theft Auto, only with fewer hookers and drug dealers and way more mayhem.
***
Rodney climbed out of the storm drain, and the first thing he saw was Zelenka's worried face.
"Are you all right? Where's Grodin?"
Rodney yanked off his helmet and stared at Zelenka dully. "Grodin's dead."
"What?" Zelenka said. He blinked and sank to his knees. "What? No. He can't be."
Rodney jerked at the buckle holding the tank to his back, swearing as it refused to come free. The oxygen tank finally dropped to the ground with a resonant thunk. Rodney sat down abruptly. "He's dead. I don't know what happened."
"Oh, God," Zelenka said. "This is my fault. He wouldn't have been down there if it weren't for me."
"Don't be ridiculous," Rodney said, but his heart wasn't in it.
"What are we going to tell his family?"
Rodney's heart was racing, and he couldn't breathe. "They'll have to have him declared dead. There's no body. I don't know how you do that in this country. These people don't have coroner's inquests. I mean, assuming they believe me when I tell them that Grodin was consumed by magma while in a storm drain. Who in their right mind would believe -- ow!"
Rodney's cheek stung. Zelenka had slapped him.
"Rodney," Zelenka said. "Look at the lake."
Rodney turned his head. The lake was bubbling, and the air was even steamier outside of his suit.
"You could hard boil eggs in there," Rodney said.
"Not good," Zelenka said.
"So not good," Rodney said. His pulse fluttered in his throat. "Terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad."
Zelenka turned away from the lake and looked toward their Humvee. "Rodney? Is that your phone ringing?"
"Screw the phone," Rodney said, feeling something brush his face. He raised his hand as if to catch a snowflake. "Is that ash?"
***
John stood next to the open gate of his truck with his first aid kit open and the contents strewn over the truck bed. He had one hand on his cell phone and was using the other to press a gauze bandage to a burn on a lady's neck. Her apartment building was engulfed in flames, and she was weeping openly. John tried to wipe his sweaty forehead on his sleeve.
"Everybody calm down. Fire department's on its way," John yelled, and then said over the phone, "Lorne, where the hell are my emergency services?"
"I'm on it, sir," Lorne said. "Shit. Engine 17 is down at Wilshire and Curson."
"That's a block from me," John said. He slammed up the gate and shouted, "Fire department's on its way. Everything will be okay."
Then John got in his truck again and floored it. Ash was coming down thickly now, like sticky fog. The downed fire engine was close. John could have hoofed it, but he didn't really relish the idea of getting beaned by a chunk of flaming rock. There was a young woman with her hair in a ponytail and she was kneeling over a firefighter on the ground. He got out of his truck and ran over to her.
"Ma'am, the ambulances are on the way, so if you could --"
She gave him an exasperated look. "I'm a doctor. This man has a skull fracture." She pointed back toward the fire engine. "That other man has a compound fracture in his left leg. Can you get him off the street?"
"Yes, ma'am," John said. "Doctor. Sir."
She rolled her eyes. She was pretty and so young that she made John feel ancient. "Dr. Jennifer Keller."
"Pleased to meet you," John said, and dragged the firefighter off the street. He could see another firefighter trapped inside the fire engine, so John hauled himself up the side of the overturned truck and wrenched open the door.
Suddenly everything went quiet, and John hadn't even realized how loud the roaring had gotten; it was like walking out of a rock concert and realizing your ears were out of whack the moment you tried to hold a normal conversation. Then the ground started rumbling again, and there was a huge boom, glass shattering out of all the nearby buildings and raining down on their heads.
In the distance, lava started shooting out of the tar pits.
"Well," John said. "That's not good."
It did look pretty awesome, though. Except for the part where lava was overflowing onto Wilshire Boulevard and heading their way fast.
John dropped himself into the fire engine and grabbed the driver's arms, hauling the guy onto his shoulder. It hurt like a son of a bitch, and John wasn't sure how he climbed out of the engine with all the extra weight, but he never left a man behind. John dropped the driver into the outstretched arms of a couple firefighters and climbed off the engine just in time to see the lava engulf his truck. The tires blew.
It sucked. John really liked that truck, and filling out the insurance claim for lava was going to be hilarious.
John ran over to Dr. Keller. She and some other firefighters were hauling the injured men into her SUV.
"I'm taking them to Cedars!" she shouted.
"I'm gonna borrow your phone," John said. He reached into the front and grabbed her car phone, dialing Operations. "Lorne, we're at Level One here. Close all the I-10 off-ramps for La Brea, La Cienega, Fairfax. Ten-block perimeter."
"Yes, sir," Lorne said.
"This is a declaration of emergency, we need immediate assistance from county, state, and federal. All available National Guard units to this site. Oh, and air tankers. We kinda need water."
"What's going on out there?" Lorne asked.
"Oh, you know. Volcano," John said.
***
When Rodney finally checked his messages, he called O.E.M. and someone named Lorne instructed him to get his ass to Wilshire and Stanley, Sheppard's words, sorry, sir. Rodney and Zelenka pulled up to madness. Fire engines, police, lava.
Rodney fumbled with the seatbelt. "Let me out here. You head back to CIGS."
"What? No," Zelenka protested.
"You head back to CIGS, coordinate from there. Call Elizabeth. Make sure she's okay," Rodney said.
Zelenka wavered. "I can't abandon you here."
"You're not abandoning me, you moron. Somebody needs to go back to CIGS and let them know what the hell is going on." Rodney got out of the Humvee with his bag of equipment and banged his fist against the door. Zelenka hesitated a long moment before driving away.
Rodney walked forward into the chaos and paused for a moment once he caught sight of the eruption. It was magnificent. And totally, completely insane. There was an explosion and a whistling sound, and Rodney looked up to see a globe of molten rock flying their way.
"Get down!" somebody shouted. "Take cover!"
"No no no no!" Rodney called to them. "What are you doing? That's not -- watch it! Don't take your eyes off it until you know where it's going to land. You there -- move move move!"
Rodney ducked and covered his ears with his hands as the rock hit, then stood up hesitantly to assess the damage.
"Haven't you people ever seen a lava bomb before?" he demanded. The firefighters stared at him dumbly.
Rodney heard a familiar voice and turned on his heel, seeing Sheppard gesturing at a few uniformed police officers. For some reason, knowing that Sheppard was there made Rodney feel a wave of relief. It was incredibly irritating. Rodney walked over to him.
"Hey, fancy meeting you here," Sheppard said, patting one of the uniforms on the shoulder.
"What? What?" Rodney said. "Are you insane?"
"Okay, so, volcano," Sheppard said, pointing at the eruption in the tar pits. "What do we do?"
"Evacuate the west side. It's going to destroy everything in its path until it hits the ocean," Rodney said.
"That's a lot of people to move," Sheppard said as if there were other options.
"So?" Rodney demanded. "It's a volcano! It doesn't care about population density!"
"And your strategy is to run away?"
Rodney boggled at him. "Volcano. It's not the rabbit of Caerbannog!"
Sheppard grimaced. Ash was collecting in his crazy sticky-uppy hair. "Think we can channel it?"
"What? No! Are you insane? I already asked you that. It would be impossi--"
"With concrete," Sheppard said, motioning with his hands. "Direct the flow."
Rodney snapped his fingers and pointed at Sheppard. "It'll never work. Let's try it."
Sheppard snatched a phone out of the hand of a passing news reporter.
"Hey, that's my phone!" the guy yelled.
"Oh, my God," Rodney said. "Volcano. Why does nobody seem to grasp the gravity of the situation?"
"Lorne," Sheppard was saying, "I need all the K-rails we have in the city. We're gonna build a corridor."
***
John hung up the phone and saw that McKay was lying on the ground on his belly and peering at the street.
"What are you doing?" John asked curiously.
McKay pointed. "The pavement is angled. The lava flow is going to shift that way."
"Shit," John said.
"Exactly," Rodney said.
"Hey," John said. He gestured over a uniformed officer. Big guy with awesome dreads. "Lieutenant, what's down that street?"
"Residential. Nursing homes, houses, hospitals," he said.
"Shit," John said again, staring down Fairfax Avenue. A few minutes later, trucks started pulling up with his K-rails. "What's your name, Lieutenant?
"Ronon Dex."
"Ronon," John said. "Cool. Come with me."
John jogged over to the flatbed trucks and greeted the driver with a nod. "All right, we're gonna build a corridor out of these things, keep everything flowing down Wilshire and headed west --"
"Only 82 K-rails here," Ronon said about half a second before John noticed it himself. "Don't think that's gonna be enough."
"Where are the rest of them?" John asked the driver.
"Freeways are gridlocked," the driver said. "That's all we got."
"We could knock over some buildings, make a dam," Ronon mused, scratching his beard.
"Huh," John said. He walked over to the Fire Chief. "How long do you think before this gets to Fairfax, Sam?"
She squinted at the lava and tucked her blonde hair behind her ear. "I make it ten minutes."
"Okay, we're going to use these K-rails to build a wall at the intersection of Wilshire and Fairfax," John announced. He made a u-shape with his hands. "Like a cul-de-sac."
McKay shoved in next to him. "Wait for the lava to pool, and then dump all the water you've got on it. It might form a crust, slow it down."
John stared at him. "Seriously?"
McKay shrugged. His eyes were incredibly blue. "Worked in Iceland. Oh, and it's like the world's biggest sauna. Great for your pores. What? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"You heard the man," John said. "Let's do this thing."
And they built themselves a goddamn wall, and then the lava came, and John dumped a fuckton of water on it.
***
Rodney heard the news over the radio. Lava was in the subway tunnels, and Sheppard had his hands full up top coordinating the water drop. It wasn't like he wanted to do it, not after what happened last time, but Rodney told himself that somebody had to, and he was the only one who was qualified. And so he grabbed his bag of equipment and made a police officer drop him at the closest entrance to the subway.
He knew there was no way the trains were running and that the power was out, so it wasn't like he could get electrocuted by the third rail, but still.
Rodney walked so far down the tunnel that he considered, reconsidered, turned back once, and was in the middle of giving himself a pep talk when he finally found a cave-in with jets of steam coming out of the rock.
"Oh, no no no no," Rodney said. He jammed a temperature gauge into the dirt. Possibly he prayed in spite his rather staunch atheism. It wasn't like anyone else could hear. Except God. If God existed. There wasn't any empirical evidence.
The temperature gauge beeped. 527F and climbing. Climbing way too fast.
"Oh, my God," Rodney said. He took out the temperature gauge and ran out of the tunnel like he was being chased by something large and rabid.
***
John and Ronon surveyed the wall and the cooling lava, ash still raining down on their heads.
"Dude," Ronon said, holding out his fist.
John bumped it. "I know, right?"
The Fire Chief waved John over. She was on the radio. "Sheppard. Your geophysicist wants to speak with you."
"Yeah?" John said.
"She got my field right. Nobody ever does that," McKay said over the radio. "What's her name, again? Sam?"
"What do you want, McKay?" John asked loudly.
"We've got a problem," McKay said. "A big problem. Really big. And we passed worst case scenario, like, hours ago."
"Lay it on me."
"Lava in the subway tunnels," McKay said.
John rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Of course there is."
"How soon can you meet me at Wilshire and Western?" McKay asked.
"Pretty soon," John said. "Sheppard out."
And then John stole a police motorcycle. Technically he had the authority, and it wasn't like anybody was using it at the time. He drove up Wilshire until he saw McKay standing on the sidewalk with his hands on his hips, face streaked with ash.
McKay pointed at the street. Steam was venting out of an open grate which led to the subway tunnel system. "I need to get down there. Got any rope?"
"What? No," John said, parking the motorcycle.
"Oh, fine, I think I have some in here somewhere," McKay said, digging through his bag.
"No, I mean it's too dangerous," John said. "I'll go."
"Oh, please, you don't even know what I'm looking for," McKay said.
John grabbed McKay's shirt. "Then tell me."
McKay crossed his arms. It did good things for his biceps. "No."
"If I'm not going, you're not going," John said.
"Fine," McKay said.
They stared at each other for a moment, until John said, "You don't have a video camera in that bag, do you?"
McKay blinked. "Actually, I --"
A column of flame rose from the grate, and John grabbed McKay and pushed him out of the way. They hit the street hard, John landing half on top of McKay in what was kind of a compromising position. McKay was pretty solid under his loose T-shirt.
"Um," McKay said. His hands were on John's hips.
"Right," John said, and rolled off him. They both crawled to the edge of the grate, attempting to peer down it without burning off their faces. Lava was flowing through the subway tunnel below.
"The tunnels are insulating it," McKay said. "Keeping it superheated. Oh, my God, it's moving fast."
"What's it going to do?" John asked.
McKay opened and closed his crooked mouth for a moment, his eyes wide. "It'll keep going until it hits a dead end, and then it's going to punch through the surface."
John was already dialing Operations. "Lorne. Where does the red line tunnel end?"
"You mean the last stop?" Lorne asked.
"No, the tunnel itself."
Lorne muffled the receiver. John could hear him shouting questions at people. "They stopped drilling under the Beverly Center, sir."
John slammed his hand on the ground. It hurt. A lot. "They stopped drilling next to Cedars-Sinai Hospital?"
"Of course they did," McKay moaned.
John grabbed McKay's shirt again. "How long before it hits La Cienega?"
"I don't know, let me think!" McKay closed his hands. He wiggled his fingers, whispering numbers under his breath.
"How long, McKay?" John demanded.
McKay's eyes popped open. "I don't know! Thirty minutes, maybe less."
"We've been sending all the injured to Cedars," John said. "We have to reroute this thing."
"What are you looking at me for?" Rodney asked as if he hadn't been supplying John with answers he needed the entire time.
"Talk to me, Lorne," John said. "Give me a picture of what's happening."
"We've got lava flow in a storm drain on Fairfax. Genesee transformer is out. We've got --"
"Storm drain?"
McKay visibly perked up. "What storm drain?"
"It dumps into Ballona Creek," Lorne said.
John said, "Ballona Creek --"
"-- goes to the ocean," Rodney said, snapping his fingers. "How close is it to Cedars?"
"Close enough," John said. "Get on the bike. We're going to the Beverly Center."
***
Rodney clutched at Sheppard's waist and tucked his forehead against his nape to avoid getting more ash in his eyes. Also because Sheppard was driving so fast that Rodney thought he might throw up. They screeched to a halt near the Beverly Center at San Vicente and 3rd, and Sheppard hopped off the motorcycle, nearly clocking Rodney in the face with his elbow. Rodney waited a moment to stand up. His legs were wobbly.
"Ford!" Sheppard called out. "Think you can blow up this street?"
A young man grinned widely. "Of course I can, sir. What did you have in mind?"
"We need a trench as wide as the street, deep as you can get it," Sheppard said.
"No no no no no," Rodney said. He dropped down to his knees and eyeballed the pavement, and it was just not good. "The street slopes the wrong way. You'll send the lava straight into the Beverly Center if you do that."
"Maybe it won't," Sheppard said.
"Look, just trust me, okay?" Rodney said. He rose to his feet and made a futile attempt to dust off his pants.
Sheppard frowned. "Then give me another plan, McKay."
"Evacuate the hospital."
The police Lieutenant with the dreads -- Rodney didn't remember his name, but he was pleased to see him there because he didn't seem to be afflicted with stupidity -- was shaking his head. "They're doing surgery on the street. We can't move them."
"I don't know what to do," Sheppard admitted. He wore a hangdog expression for about thirty seconds, and then suddenly turned around. "Unless..."
"Build a dam?" the Lieutenant said, raising an eyebrow.
"Ford," Sheppard said. He pointed at a high-rise building across the street; it appeared to be in the final phase of construction. "You've got less than 20 minutes to blow that up so it'll make a dam in front of the hospital."
Ford actually bounced on his toes. "Oh, this is gonna be so cool."
"You can't be serious," Rodney protested.
"Will it divert the flow?" Sheppard asked.
Rodney boggled at him. "Tell me you aren't serious!"
Sheppard grabbed his arms. "Will it work?"
Rodney considered it. He cocked his head. He thought about their other options, of which there were approximately none. "Do it."
"Yeah?" Sheppard asked. He smiled suddenly, and Rodney swooned for about a second. Possibly two.
Rodney nodded. "Oh, yeah."
***
Ford and his demolitions team set a speed record with the charges. John ordered the evacuation of the Beverly Center. The ground shook and lava punched through the street, spurting into the air. People screamed. People caught on fire.
Ford brought the building down. That part, at least, was seriously awesome.
McKay pounded on John's shoulder. "It's working. Oh, my God, it's working!"
Redirected by the debris of the high-rise, lava flowed down the street toward the storm drain, and then through the storm drain and into the Pacific Ocean.
"This is the single coolest thing I have ever done," John said.
"I know!" McKay crowed, and hugged him.
John awkwardly patted his back. "Uh."
McKay let him go and took a step back. "I'm starving. Do have any food? No? Not even a PowerBar?"
"Sorry," John shrugged.
"I'm hypoglycemic, and I'm starting to feel a little unwell, so if anyone has, say, an apple? Grape juice? Crackers? Anyone?" McKay looked worried now.
"Here," Ronon said. He shoved a candy bar at McKay. "It melted."
"Oh, my God, thank you," McKay said, and hugged Ronon, too. It was quick and obviously heartfelt, like a little boy on his birthday. McKay let go and unwrapped the candy bar, shoving most of it in his mouth and making some pretty obscene moaning noises around the chocolate.
"I could use a shower and a beer," John said. He shoved his hand through his hair and promptly got a load of ash in his eyes.
Rodney snorted at him and accidentally inhaled some chocolate. He bent over coughing. It sounded bad, and it wasn't until Ronon threatened to use the Heimlich maneuver that Rodney managed to get enough breath to make a reedy protest.
"I probably should go back to my desk," John said.
McKay blinked at him. "Oh. Right, yes, I suspect you'll have your hands full over the next few days. I'll just, uh..."
"Well," John said. He pushed his hands in his back pockets. "I guess we could use an expert geophysicist on hand for a little while. Save us time calling CIGS for a consult."
"Really?" McKay looked hopeful.
"Yeah, come on," John said.
They hitched a ride back to John's office building in a squad car. John hated sitting in the back with no way to open the doors, but he was pretty sure that even if he could flag down a taxi, he probably didn't have enough money in his wallet to pay for it.
"So how did you get into this whole thing?" McKay asked.
"I perform well under pressure," John quipped. The truth was that John didn't really know. He'd sort of fallen into it through a friend of a friend after the Air Force showed him the door. He excelled in combat situations, and people told him he was a unique strategist, that he thought outside the box. And, John had to admit, he kind of failed completely at the little things that made up daily life. John preferred dealing with the big picture any day.
"Hmm," McKay said, eyeing him.
"What about you?" John asked.
"What, seriously? Our planet is fascinating, and the discipline is so... so quantitative. It's not ephemeral. It doesn't just go away." McKay seemed almost wistful, staring out the window of the car. John wondered what he'd lost, what hadn't gone right to put that expression on his face.
"Here we are," John said as they pulled up to his office building. "You can tell me the rest later."
McKay didn't look convinced. "Of course. Oh, can I use your phone?"
***
"Yes," Radek answered the phoned absently.
"Zelenka?"
"Rodney!" Radek exclaimed, standing up for no reason. "You're alive!"
"Obviously," Rodney said. "Did you get brained by a chunk of pumice, or something?"
"We were worried," Radek said, sitting down again. If Rodney was well enough to insult, it meant he would be fine.
"Really?" Rodney asked, sounding unreasonably pleased.
"Yes. Dr. Kavanaugh even started a betting pool on your chances of survival."
Rodney hissed. "I'll crush him under the might of my first-hand observations of volcanic activity in an urban environment."
"Many awards, many papers and presentations at conferences," Radek said soothingly. "You will make him very jealous."
"Of course. Look, I'll be liaising at O.E.M. for a little while," Rodney said.
Radek said, "Oh really?"
"Yes, really," Rodney snapped. "They need an expert!"
"How is Sheppard?" Radek asked.
Rodney made a grumpy noise. "He's fine. How are Elizabeth and the girls?"
"Good, good. Elizabeth's mother had power so she took the girls over there. She says that they spent the morning eating cake and watching Sesame Street."
"Hmph. I think I'm jealous. Anyway, if you need to reach me, call this number," Rodney said, rattling off a telephone number.
Radek scribbled it down on a piece of recycling paper. "Got it."
"Well, then. Let me know when Grodin's funeral is," Rodney said, and hung up the phone.
***
Rodney woke up on a strange couch. It was dark and he could hear water running; Rodney squinted at the furniture and tried to ascertain where he was. He really wasn't suave enough for one-night stands -- his charm was elusive, whatever -- but perhaps last night he'd gotten lucky?
And then Rodney remembered that the reason why he reeked of smoke wasn't because he'd spent last night in a bar.
Sheppard walked out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel and froze when he saw that Rodney was awake. "Hey."
"Hi?" Rodney said. He was very tired and Sheppard was very attractive. It was a stern test of his vocabulary.
"I needed to walk my dog, and you were kind of dead to the world. Couldn't find your wallet, so I brought you to my place," Sheppard said.
Rodney blinked and tilted his head. He had vague memories of Sheppard walking him to and from a taxi. "Did you really say 'upsy-daisy' or am I hallucinating?"
Sheppard jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "I'll just get dressed."
"Oh, do you mind?" Rodney asked, laboriously prying himself from the clutches of Sheppard's couch.
Sheppard stared at him, eyes wide and his mouth open. "Uh."
"You didn't use all the hot water, did you?" Rodney stumbled into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. He slapped his hand over his eyes and repeated, "'Do you mind?' Oh, my god."
Rodney located the spare towels and then stripped off his dirty, smoky clothes. He fiddled with the shower controls until he figured out all the handles and valves, and let out a loud groan once hot water was pounding against his shoulders and neck. Showering in someone else's bathroom was weird, and Rodney had never quite got the trick of it. Nothing was where it was supposed to be, and he was always worried that the bathroom door was going to fly open the moment he pulled back the shower curtain to step out of the tub.
Rodney dried off and knotted a towel firmly around his waist, picking up his dirty clothes with distaste.
"Sheppard?" he called hesitantly.
Sheppard poked his head around a corner. "Yeah?"
"You wouldn't happen to have a washing machine, would you?"
"Nope," Sheppard said. "But I have some clothes you can borrow."
Rodney highly doubted that, but followed Sheppard into his bedroom anyway. It was a bare room, the only mess obviously from the earthquake. Sheppard's dog was sleeping on his bed, and predictably, the dog was adorable.
"Golden Retriever?" Rodney asked.
Sheppard glanced at the dog. "Yeah, that's Max."
"Planck?"
Sheppard shook his head. "Headroom. Dog's got a unique sense of humor."
There were a few thick books on the night table, a pair of reading glasses, and several single issues of comics. When Sheppard turned away from his dresser with a T-shirt and some sweatpants, Rodney knew he just had to go for it.
"I'm going to do something now," Rodney said. "And if you want to blame it on adrenaline or temporary insanity or... or smoke inhalation, that's fine. I just -- I have this hypothesis I want to test because I really, really need to know if I'm completely off base here, and I'm going to do it now. Sorry."
Rodney dropped his smoky clothes and kissed Sheppard. He cupped Sheppard's face and opened his mouth, and put everything he had behind it, all his 'you're really incredibly intelligent and attractive and very fit and you remembered that I was allergic when ordering dinner at the office, and you like Batman'.
Sheppard didn't respond for one long moment, and Rodney was just about ready to start panicking when Sheppard grabbed Rodney's biceps and kissed him back. The first one was so hard and fast that it stung, and the next was slow and dirty, languid and with a lot of tongue. Rodney approved of this very much.
Sheppard backed away first and stared, his mouth wet and red.
"Oh," Rodney said and touched his lips.
Sheppard cleared his throat. "So, was your hypothesis correct?"
"It has merit," Rodney said. "I, uh... I think it will require further testing."
"Cool." Sheppard smiled, and it did funny things to Rodney's insides. "You hungry?"
"Yes, actually," Rodney said. "I'm famished."
Sheppard snorted. "I'll be in the kitchen."
Rodney changed quickly after Sheppard left the room. Everything was too tight. The sweatpants clung to his thighs and Rodney wasn't certain that he could lift his arms over his head while wearing Sheppard's T-shirt. But perhaps it wasn't as bad as all that, because when Rodney walked into the kitchen, Sheppard looked him up and down with an expression that made Rodney's toes curl.
"Captain Crunch?" Sheppard offered.
"Don't mind if I do," Rodney said. "Is there coffee?"
the end.